Saturday, October 31, 2015

Robert Reich's take away.

I just HAD to re-post this because I do NOT get how people do not understand what the Republican agenda is since it is right in front of us almost daily. It is insanity rehashed but somehow we do not see it when melded into the fabric of our news as a non-event.

Now
that Paul Ryan is Speaker of the House, keep a wary eye out for Ryan’s 7
favorite ideas (they’re also cropping up among Republican presidential
candidates):

1. Reduce the top
income-tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent (a huge windfall to the
rich at a time when the rich take home a larger share of total income
that at any time since the 1920s).

2. Cut corporate taxes to 25
percent from 35 percent (a giant sop to corporations, the largest of
which are already socking away $1.2 trillion in foreign tax shelters).

3. Make these cuts without adding the budget deficit by slashing
spending on domestic programs like food stamps and education for poor
districts (now, 18% of the nation's children are in poverty, and these
cuts would only make things worse).

4. Also by turning Medicaid
and other federal programs for the poor into block grants to the states,
and let the states decide how to allocate them (in other words, give
Republican state legislatures and governors slush funds to do with as
they wish).

5. And turning Medicare into vouchers that don’t keep
up with increases in healthcare costs (which would in effect cut
Medicare for the elderly).

6. Deal with rising Social Security
costs by raising the retirement age for Social Security (making Social
Security even more regressive, since the poor don't live nearly as long
as the rich).

7. Finally, don’t raise the minimum wage but let it
continue to decline as inflation makes it irrelevant; instead, provide
poor workers with a larger Earned Income Tax Credit (enlarging the EITC
is a good idea, but we need a higher minimum as well).

Bottom line: Beware Paul Ryan.

What do you think?

This consistent theme of stealing from us through the legislative process is a Republican thing. Repeatedly breaking every program in sight and taking the good of the common good to the ground is, as often as not, a theme backed by the Big Money of the 1%.